


no one can tell you if this is tail spin or free falling

by notbang



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: AU where nathaniel isn't a complete buffoon, F/M, and giving nathaniel more credit than he probably deserves, my hobbies include bending canon to my will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 11:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16474418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbang/pseuds/notbang
Summary: Of all the contacts whose names Nathaniel expects to see splashed across his lock screen at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night, Heather Davis certainly isn’t one of them.Nathaniel’s marginally less oblivious than he was last week, Rebecca’s kind of an obnoxious drunk, and Heather and Valencia just came out to have a good time. Post 4x03.





	no one can tell you if this is tail spin or free falling

**Author's Note:**

> I started this back before season four premiered and at that point it was set in some vague future post-Rebecca getting out of jail, but I was really struggling to finish it and for some reason my brain decided the best way to combat that was to rework it to be canon compliant, which opened up a whole new world of struggles, but hey—I managed to get it finished, so there’s that.
> 
> Written for the prompt 'in vino veritas'.

Of all the contacts whose names Nathaniel expects to see splashed across his lock screen at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night, _Heather Davis_ certainly isn’t one of them.

He’s reviewing case notes when his phone vibrates against his thigh; dry work, for the weekend, but with his vow of silence officially broken and more than a little chagrin at his own behaviour over the last two months he’s keen to course-correct. Starting the day with a juice cleanse and a workout and finishing with some after-hours catch-up is the least that he can do. Clearing out the mounting pile of pizza boxes and take out containers had only achieved so much—he needs to pull himself together.

_hey can u come pick your girlfriend up? she's super white girl wasted but v and i aren't ready to leave yet_

A strange, not unwelcome, tingle of anticipation squeezes in his ribcage at the request. His thumb hovers over the unlock button but he stops himself before he can slide it across.

“Not my girlfriend,” he announces instead to the empty room, tossing his phone away from him with a performative scoff, close enough that he can still read the subsequent messages that light up the display out the corner of his eye.

_paula went home hours ago. she has to get up early for like soccer or something? idk_

Whether or not he wants her to be is a whole other matter—he isn’t about to be someone’s taxi, and certainly not their _last resort_ taxi at that. Hasn’t she heard of Lyft?

_we'd put her in an uber but she’s already tried to flash the bartender twice as payment for her drinks, so we’re not convinced it’s the right time for a ride share service._

He ignores the voice inside of him that practically sing-songs at the prospect of an interaction with Rebecca, something distinctly to the tune of _this is it, you moron—this is your chance._ He chooses instead to focus on the undercurrent of protectiveness it’s interspersed with—it’s more logical, more grounded in pragmatism, and one hundred percent not the stirrings of jealousy. Since his revelation at the church he’s been buzzing with renewed determination, but it hasn’t been entirely successful at keeping the latent petulance at bay; his reigning instinct is still to be begrudging. 

_pluuuuuuus u kinda owe me since u came to my impromptu wedding just to sulk and didn’t even buy me an expensive espresso machine or anything. fyi, that’s not how friendship works. dick._

He rolls his eyes.

When he closes the case file and grabs his keys three minutes later it has nothing to do with the insistent pulse of his smart watch reminding him he has unopened messages and everything to do with the fact that he remembered he just so happens to be almost out of body wash.

What compels him to pass six gas stations, three chemists and a store on his way to the other side of town is a little less immediately clear.

*

“Nathaniel!” Rebecca manages to both yell and mumble at the same time when she spots him. “Look, you guys. My—my Nathaniel is here.”

He tries to tamp down on the pleasant burst of warmth that fans out and flutters through him at that, but he knows the surprised smile has already made it to his mouth by the time Rebecca has stumbled forward and steadied herself with a sticky palm against his collar; her other hand, grasping her purse, anchors briefly at his waist before she rights herself, and in a fleeting moment of clarity she releases him and takes a timid half-step back.

“Hi,” he ventures, quietly.

“Ugh, you called _him_?” Valencia asks, looking skeptical. She lowers her voice and speaks just to Heather. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? She's already tried to take her shirt off. Twice.”

“He’s seen it all before, so.” Heather adjusts her sash—BRIDE TO BE, with the _to be_ part scribbled out in black sharpie—and tilts her head at Rebecca. “You’re one more political argument away from getting us kicked out of this bar, so not to, like, palm you off on to somebody else, but also? V and I are palming you off onto somebody else.”

Rebecca shrugs with her entire frame, then throws out her hands when the movement knocks her off balance. “That’s probably fair.”

“Well, you’re lucky I happened to be in the neighbourhood,” Nathaniel says in the most impersonal voice he can muster.

Heather shoots him a look that says she has precisely zero misconceptions on what he was doing _in the neighbourhood._ “Oh, I knew you’d come. Even when you’re throwing a tantrum you’re like, embarrassingly whipped for a single person.”

“You owe me,” he tells her, ignoring the dig. “Big time.”

“I mean, if you want to tell yourself that. Sure. But we can reassess who owes who later. And by owe, I _do_ mean a wedding present.”

“Rebecca, it’s such a bummer that you’re not feeling well,” Valencia says, tone overly bright, before leaning over to kiss her on each cheek. “Try and keep your clothes on, mmkay? Byeeee.”

“Mm-hmm. Well—later.” Heather signs off with an unenthusiastic wave before allowing herself to be tugged back in the direction of the dance floor.

Rebecca hiccups beside him.

He briefly debates the pros and cons of sequestering her to the back versus having her in the passenger side where he can keep an eye on her, but before he can step around to open the door for her she makes it easy on him and yanks on a rear handle to scramble inside, limbs akimbo, dress hiking at her thighs, and melt across the entirety of the three seats.

He regards her through the open door with mounting amusement and only mild irritation. “You’re going to have to sit up,” he says. “You need to put on a seatbelt.”

Something unintelligible but vaguely stubborn-sounding in tone comes from the Rebecca-shaped puddle in response.

His hands hover at his sides, suddenly uncomfortably, uncharacteristically hyperaware of his own motivations and hesitant to touch her. He settles on going for the belt instead, tugging on the black strap and extending it, expectantly, towards her. “Rebecca,” he says, voice gentle but firm.

Moaning her protest but lifting her head, Rebecca stares up at him—bleary-eyed and charmingly rosy-cheeked, through a curtain of messy dark hair—and the jolt of affection hits him right in the stomach.

He swallows. “Please?”

She holds his gaze an unnerving moment longer—the glazed sea-glass burning right through him as if into his soul—before pulling herself into an approximation of a seated position long enough to allow him to reach over and click the belt into place.

She points at him, eyes narrowing and fingers curling into little claws. “Hey. I thought you weren’t talking.”

“It’s the weekend,” he shrugs. “Off the clock.”

Rebecca hums in response and starts to sag against the back of the seat, eyelids hanging heavy under the weight of the wine on her breath, and Nathaniel takes it as his cue to clear his throat and step back to close the door.

By the time he eases into her driveway she’s practically asleep, her head lolling against the window perfectly framed in the rearview mirror until she jerks awake as if by intuition when the car rolls to a gentle stop. It takes her several tries to unfasten the seatbelt and throw open the door, sending Nathaniel cringing at the way it slams outward and narrowly avoids grazing her letterbox.

“Can you walk?”

She manages to mumble something with an air of indignation as she stumbles from the car and zig-zags up the driveway, her purse trailing along the cement where she drags it behind her. He watches her fumble through her bag, illuminated in the headlights as she almost drops it several times. After a moment she starts patting around the door frame, swaying, before sinking abruptly to sit cross legged on the floor with a thud.

Nathaniel sighs and shuts off the ignition.

“What are you doing?” he asks as he slams the car door and walks towards her with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.

Rebecca sticks a hand in the air in an uncoordinated half shrug. “I don’t have my keys,” she says, squinting up at him.

“And there isn’t a spare?”

“I think Hector took it and didn’t put it back. S’fine. I’ll just…” 

He bends down and grabs her shoulder without thinking to stop her from lying down in the dirt, and her head jerks up in surprise, knocking him in the chin, sending his teeth snapping sharply together. Releasing her with a wince, Nathaniel falters at the proximity of her face to his, her eyes wide and hazy, smudged lips parted in a confused little ‘o’. The last time they’d been this close she’d pressed her forehead affectionately against his, and more than anything he wishes he could go back to that, go back to his fingers at her jaw and her cheek nuzzling companionably into his hand and tamp down on the poison that had flared up in him white-hot in panic, that still-reeling and raw from the last time had taken her words and heard only _rejection._

There’s an awkward silence as they both contemplate the obvious alternative to her spending a night camped out in the carport, and Nathaniel makes the decision for the both of them when he hooks his arms under hers to hoist her to her feet. She wobbles, and after a moment of consideration kicks her heels off in the general direction of the front door for someone to trip over later.

She holds up a finger for him to wait and ten seconds later she’s doubled over the edge of the garden bed heaving, her roiling stomach struggling to bring up anything other than bile and she coughs and splutters at the burn before straightening up and wiping gingerly at the side of her mouth.

“Okay,” she says, holding her stomach. “I’m good to go. But could we maybe stop for grease on the way?”

*

Once he’s done gathering up the fries she managed to tip out across the backseat of his car after emphatically promising she wouldn’t, Nathaniel wipes the salt off his hands onto the fabric of his jeans and focuses his attention on shepherding her up the stairwell without her breaking her neck.

It’s only when he catches her staring doe-eyed in the direction of the walkway to the rooftop that it occurs to him what happened the last time she was here.

He’s absently relieved he’s had a chance to get the maid in since his time spent spiralling and sulking over the past month, equally out of an unshakable Plimpton need to present properly and his wounded pride’s determination for her not to see what she’s capable of drawing out of him. Not that she’s in any state to care or notice, judging by the way her words slur and sluice together and her eyes slide from one side of him to the other as if constantly trying to reconcile the shifting kaleidoscope of her vision.

He should be thankful, he supposes, that they’re across the threshold by the time she goes totally limp; a drunk, dead weight attached to him at the hip. The sudden uncooperative swing of her legs dragging between his trips him up and he stumbles forward, depositing her on the couch far less smoothly than he’d planned and finding himself resting half on top of her, braced against crushing her completely with a hastily flung-out arm along the back of the frame.

Rebecca, for her part, seems unconcerned with the arrangement.

“Mm, you’re so… snuggly,” she mumbles, fisting her hands into his shirt and curling into his side. “I’m just… I’m just gonna take a nap.”

“I am not _snuggly_ ,” he protests, managing to sound somewhat indignant to the notion but being ultimately undercut by the way his whole body tenses then goes loose as she snuffles into his neck.

He carefully extricates himself from her hold and straightens, shaking himself off and smoothing down his shirt, peering down his nose at the sight of her pouting into the couch cushion, forehead adorably creased.

He tries in vain to remember the last time she was on his couch. Tries to remember anything past stolen moments in a dusty supply closet to that brief stretch of weeks he’d thought they had all the time in the world.

“So true confesh time—I have had _a lot_ of wine,” she whispers conspiratorially with a giggle.

“Ah. Funny that—I can tell. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drunk before,” he says. “I’m not convinced it’s a good look for you.”

Rebecca pokes out her tongue and twists onto her back to better look up at him, eyes crinkling at the lights, and after a moment she says, “Buffalo.”

“Hmm?”

“The last time I was drunk. It was in Buffalo.”

It takes him a moment to make the connection but when he does he can’t stop the twinge of arousal, hot and sharp, and he swears he sees the same reaction mirrored to some degree in her; catalogues the way she shifts and tightens in on herself, the way her damp, pink cheeks flush further under his gaze.

He means to laugh it off but the noise that comes out is more like a shaky groan. 

“Well, you’re all settled, then. Great,” he says, too loudly, and rubs his hands together to combat the nervous energy suddenly thrumming through his circulatory system. He grabs his gas station body wash as a statement of intent. “I’m going to take a shower. Excuse me.”

When he eventually reemerges from what is probably one of the longest showers he’s taken in his life, the damp crest of his hair curling down over his forehead, he expects to find Rebecca snoring into the upholstery. She clearly had other ideas in his absence, though—stubborn with all things, even in her intoxication—and has instead migrated to the floor, propped up chin-upon-palm-upon-knee and squinting at the screen of his computer, commandeered from the raided satchel now tossed carelessly to the side on the rug he’d so reluctantly let Mona replace. There’s something painfully familiar there, even in its foreign domesticity, and it gives him pause in the doorway to his bathroom for longer than he’d care to admit. 

About ten minutes later, she gets her second wind.

She’s definitely not sober, by any means, though to be fair her incessant drunken chatter is near indistinguishable from her usual bubbly baseline. Her eyes are brighter, less foggy than they were earlier, and her movements are more controlled. She manages to keep herself passably upright, greedily gulping down the water he brings her almost before he can blink. She’s definitely not sober, but she’s _here_ , present and receptive and animated, as if she hadn’t just thrown up in her own garden an hour and a half prior. As if they’re cosied up wine-warm and tipsy together in the wake of a shared meal rather than a belated bachelorette party gone wrong. 

She’s definitely not sober but he’s punch-drunk on something, and the words tumble out of him unbidden.

“Hey. Listen. I uh, I wanted to tell you, you looked… nice. At the wedding.” He scrunches up his face at the way he’s tripping over himself, and how entirely lacking the word _nice_ is at encapsulating how effortlessly, breathtakingly beautiful she’d looked in that moment. “And your speech, I wanted to say that—”

“Hold up. _You_ were at the wedding,” she interrupts, frowning. “Heather and Hector’s wedding. Really?”

He nods. “Yes.”

She stares at him blankly. “Where?”

“Where?” he echoes.

“And why? We’re not together. I didn’t invite you.”

There’s no malice in her tone—just matter-of-fact confusion—but despite the undeniable truth to her words, hearing it put so bluntly _stings._ They never really discussed it, after their argument—the not-together part—and even though he pointedly hasn’t spoken to her for the best part of three weeks he’d taken some kind of secret comfort in the lack of definition to the latest shift in their dynamic.

“If you must know,” he says, more haughtily than he intends, “Heather added me to the event on Facebook.”

Rebecca bursts out laughing, doubling over at the force of it. “Facebook? What, you two are friends now?” She scoffs, then stops and straightens at the hesitation on his face. “Oh, you’re—you’re serious? You and Heather? Well, stranger things have happened, I guess.” She wriggles from side to side and reaches back to yank an ill-positioned cushion out from where it’s digging uncomfortably into her lower back, hugging it to her chest instead. She pulls a childish face at him. “That still doesn’t explain what you were doing there. You think marriage and weddings are stupid, remember?”

“I came to your wedding, didn’t I?” he contradicts, regretting the words the minute they leave his mouth. Rebecca doesn’t flinch, though, apparently too preoccupied with her own question to be particularly bothered by his. In a display of honesty that surprises even him, he says, “And if you really want to know, I came to ignore you.”

He avoids her eyes and waits for the inevitable _that’s really sad, dude_ , but the seconds tick by and nothing comes. When he ventures a glance at Rebecca his heart lurches at the distinctly doused-in-ice-water, kicked-puppy quality to her face, her state of inebriation leaving her ill-equipped to school the despondence written over every inch of it.

“I know you hate me,” she says quietly, and he’s still too taken aback to immediately contradict her. “I know you hate me for what I did at the hearing. And for Hawaii.”

It’s a bad idea, having this conversation now—her drunk and he still unsure of the best way to proceed. But the yearning surges up in him like an uncontrollable tide, bitter and brackish and desperate for her closeness, for her forgiveness, for her to say anything that sounds like she still wants him too.

“I don’t…” He licks his lips. “I don’t hate you. It would probably make it easier if I did.”

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

He shuts his eyes as if in confirmation, squeezing them tight. “You know why,” he says hoarsely.

When he manages to pry his open again hers have already started to shine like they’re welling with tears, and he fidgets uncomfortably, all too aware he’s fast finding himself out of his depth.

“Oh. Please don’t—”

Rebecca scrubs an angry fist across her eyes with a determined sniff, leaving a dark smudge of mascara and eyeshadow across her face in its wake.

“It wasn’t about you,” she says, “and you don’t understand but that’s big, for me. It might have been stupid but I did it for myself. I don’t do things for myself. I think I do, but then it always turns out they’re about other people.”

He _wants_ to understand her; gets, now, that he never has, not completely. He’s always known on some level that Rebecca Bunch is so much _more_ than him, in so many ways—that it’s what drew him to her in the first place. This tiny but larger-than-life woman that can be so similar to him and confusingly different all at once. She’d decided to put happiness before success, she’d told him once, and wrapped in his sheets with her body tucked into the curve of his he’d thought he’d finally realised what she meant. 

“I know it was probably asking too much, but I thought maybe you could be happy for me. Trying to get better. Trying to _be_ better.”

“I…” He trails off, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow at the accusation in her voice, warring with himself over what to say. “I’m sorry. I was hurt. I was hurt and embarrassed, because I let myself believe you were getting better with me.”

“Nathaniel—”

“Rebecca, I meant it when I said I felt closer to you than I’d ever felt to anyone. And when you took that away from me, it stung. So I was angry at myself, for letting myself be vulnerable with you. For caring enough that I could get hurt. And I was angry at you, for making me feel happy only to rip it all away. Because I’d never really cared about happy before.”

She stares at him for a long time, and for all the reactions he could have predicted to this admission he certainly wasn’t expecting her to respond with a shaky breath, claw her way up the side of the couch and scramble woozily to her feet.

He watches her pace the length of his living room three times before she hones in on something in the corner, striding towards his liquor shelf with the specific brand of purpose that can only be born out of inebriation. He clocks her intention a second too late.

“Woah, okay. I think you’ve had enough,” he says, but she’s already fumbling for the stopper. “Careful, that’s cryst—oh, and you’re drinking straight from the decanter. Wonderful. Super classy.”

She coughs around the burn, and he takes advantage of her momentary distraction to snatch the carafe out of her precarious grasp, relegating it to a higher shelf decidedly out of her reach.

“What the hell is that?” she splutters. “Rat poison?”

“Eighteen year old single malt scotch, actually.”

“Same difference, apparently. God.”

Her eyes travel up to where he’s hidden the bottle and he moves to stand between her and the wall, just in case.

“What is up with you tonight?” he asks, realising how much of it she’s spent vaguely restless, ill-at-ease. “Why the hangover death wish?”

He’s nursed a glass or two in self pity in their collective aftermath. He understands drinking to drown a void.

His track record isn’t exactly great when it comes to reading the room with her, but for eight blurry months she’d let him exist beside her in a bubble, away from the office, away from his girlfriend, away from every confusing reason she’d said she had to let him go. He knows her body, knows her tells. He knows more about her now than he’s ever cared to know about another person, and he’s not ready to give up learning her just yet.

“I was just feeling a little melancholy, and I didn’t want to think thoughts anymore.”

Her choice of words hits him harder than he expects, dread pooling thick and viscous in his stomach. “What kind of thoughts?”

She puffs her cheeks out before she continues, starting off hesitant but gathering in bristly agitation as she rolls along. “About happiness, and what it means for different people. And how most of the time I feel good about how I’m still figuring that out but also how much it kind of hurts that one of your best friends can manage to have a shotgun wedding and somehow _not_ fuck it up, and get their life so perfectly together without even trying, when sometimes it feels like you’re doing nothing _but_ trying and things still aren’t going quite right.” She sniffs and drags her wrist across the underside of her nose. “I bought a pretzel shop,” she adds, gesticulating with her hands as if that explains everything. “I own a pretzel shop, now.”

“Okay,” he says.

“And I love my pretzel shop, I do. It’s called Rebetzels. It’s—you’ll see it when you come into work. It’s in the lobby, you can’t miss it, first one is on the house,” she rambles with a shake of her head. “And I love Heather, and Hector, and I love that they got married, don't get me wrong. It’s like, my favourite thing. But it’s just… sometimes I kind of hate them, too, you know? God. I mean, you get it, right?” She gestures in his general direction. “Your life is boring and lonely and unfulfilling and sad.”

Burst of bitterness deflating as quickly as it bubbled up, she lets out a breath and lurches towards him, shoulders sagging, unsteady until he stops her with a hand just above her hip and then it’s as if she crumbles at his touch, knees buckling as she falls forward and buries her head in his chest.

“Can I… it’s just you’re a really good hugger, and I need…”

Unlike all previous instances they’ve shared she slips her arms tentatively around his waist rather than flinging them up and over his shoulders like she usually would, always casting herself so much bigger than what she is. He’s acutely aware of how small she is now, though—melting into and around him and gripping him like he’s an anchor and she’s terrified of drifting out to sea. He lets his hands settle on her back; lifts his chin to tuck her snugly underneath. Only hesitates a second before squeezing her tight.

He shuts his eyes and noses into her hair, and he’s rewinding time like he’s wished more than once he could until he’s back on her porch, in his entryway, in her kitchen and giddy with promise. He’s missed her, missed _this,_ and the truth that gripped him at the wedding washes over him tenfold: he can’t not have her in his life. He can’t fathom the thought of never holding her this way again.

He misses Mona too, he supposes, in the cursory sort of way one misses things that are there until they’re not. It sounds callous, he knows, but also knows it was the kinder choice to walk away. And that’s the thing: he’s always considered love—at least, in the sense someone like himself has ever been capable of entertaining it—a choice, and he could have chosen her, easy enough. They laughed and had fun, the sex was good, it was uncomplicated until it wasn’t through no fault of her own and his parents had unprecedentedly, unanimously approved.

But _love is finding your own path,_ Rebecca had said in her speech, and lately he sees the fork in the road laid out by his father all too disconcertingly clear. 

“Nathaniel?” Her breath is hot and soaked in whisky where it puffs up against his cheek, the button of her nose trailing the length of his jaw.

His answering hum, par for the course, hangs strangled in the back of his throat.

“I don’t want to be done,” she confesses.

She inches forward tentatively, eyes closed; a timid sapling, searching out the sun. He realises with a sudden, sickening pulse of self-loathing that this is what a part of him had secretly hoped for in answering Heather’s summons tonight—a dulled-down version of reformed Rebecca, mellow and apologetic and in search of reconciliation. But she’s drunk and she’s lonely and right now her misery loves company, not him. He dips down, allowing himself the selfish moment of slipped self-control, savouring the sensation of her nudging her nose against his before pulling abruptly back, the moment soured, and curls his hands into fists at his sides.

“You should get some sleep,” he says, clearing his throat. “It’s late, and I…” He trails off at the bewildered look on her face. “I’m not done, Rebecca,” he tells her with far more confidence than he feels. “But I’m going to get it right, this time. I promise.”

He realises how entirely new this is for him—denying her what he so desperately aches to confirm she wants in favour of what she needs—and hopes she can do what he’s failed at so miserably every time; hopes she can look at the space he’s stopped himself from occupying and see _restraint_ and not _rejection._

She drops obediently back onto the couch, red eyes vacant and downcast, and after a beat swings her legs up beside her and buries herself wordlessly in the blanket with a muffled sob.

It’s quiet for a long time after he turns out the lights.

“Your plan was stupid, too,” she mutters, just when he thinks she’s fallen asleep.

He’s not sure if she’s referring to the hearing, or Hawaii, or both, and hopes his new one—holding back—bodes infinitely better.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “I know.”

He lies awake in the dark and lets himself be lulled by the sound of her snores.

* 

Nathaniel jerks awake to the angry sound of knuckles connecting with wood and Rebecca moaning in pathetic protest from the couch.

Dragging a hand through his unkempt hair and squinting in the early morning sunlight, he swings his door open to find an incensed looking, wedding-veiled Heather on his doorstep, fist poised to knock again with Valencia hovering heavy-lidded behind her and smothering a yawn.

“Wh—how do you know where I live?”

“An even better question, since you definitely know where _I_ live, would be why is Rebecca not there, when that is where you were supposed to be taking her? And also, like, how you’ll be reimbursing me for the second Uber we had to take over here to collect her.”

He crosses his arms over his chest, irritated, though equally so at himself for his regrettable lack of foresight to message Heather about their change in plans. He makes a mental note to have George send over an espresso machine if by some miracle she doesn’t murder him with her bare hands. 

“I brought her back to my place because your little friend Betty Ford over here forgot her keys. Or did you want me to leave her passed out in your driveway?”

Valencia elbows her way in beside Heather and crosses her own arms, nodding threateningly in a way that has Nathaniel way more terrified of someone half his body mass than he has any right to be. He’s fairly certain she’s not entirely in control of her faculties, but the alcohol has done nothing to dilute the death stare currently being aimed in his general direction.

“Look. Nothing happened, okay? I gave her a glass of water and a blanket and she passed out on the…” He trails off as he gestures over his shoulder only to notice the now-empty couch juxtaposed with the undulating motion coming from beneath his bedspread and the muss of dark brown bedhead peeking out the top across his pillow.

“Mmm, warm,” Rebecca mumbles, burrowing herself into the indent he’s just vacated.

At Valencia’s unimpressed raised eyebrow he defends, “She _just_ moved there. You _saw_ her do it.”

“We get it. She’s a slave to her baser mammalian instincts,” Heather says, pushing inside and busying herself with taking off her shoes. 

He watches with bemusement as Valencia follows suit.

“Hey, girl,” Heather drawls, tone dripping with judgment as she yanks down the comforter, eliciting a whine from her housemate, who stripped of her cocoon proceeds to roll herself into a ball. “Heard you lost your keys.”

Once they’re satisfied Rebecca is still wearing all her clothes from the evening before—save for the bra she’d uncoordinatedly managed to half-extract through her left armhole at some stage during the night—they flop down on the mattress beside her, an awkward twist of limbs attempting to kick themselves under the already tangled bedlinen.

“No, no, no—what do you think you’re doing?” Nathaniel demands, throwing up his hands. “Get out of my bed. You’re getting make up on my pillows.”

“You can go now,” Valencia says with a dismissive flick of her wrist, combing her hair out of her face and closing her eyes.

“This is _my_ apartment.”

“Don’t care,” Heather says. She carefully extricates the novelty veil out of her hair to set on his nightstand and slings her elbow up over her head on the pillow. “And keep it down, we’re trying to get some beauty rest. Kudos on the high thread count sheets, by the way. I dig.”

Rebecca—flanked by body heat and no longer quite so ball-shaped—babbles something mostly incoherent in response, but as she slides her arm around Valencia’s waist and presses her nose into the other woman’s hair Nathaniel’s pretty sure he hears the words ‘roasted corn’.

*

He hates how softly he finds himself closing the door on his way out.


End file.
